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I was just wondering to myself if there is any merit to this idea or has this been implemented?
The point is to provide a single player game but provide an online account to the map system. The map evolves as players design modules and challenge the existing modules to win rank over certain zones. Players may select versions of zones by difficulty (based on survey), rank (based on votes), author, thread name, class (puzzle, crawl, seige, trade). After completing/failing a zone, you can vote or abstain on it and put comments on a bulletin board. Each online account gets 1 vote per module. If you fail at a zone, your hero is restored back to the state at the beginning of the zone and you can decide to try again or play a different version of that zone.
Zones would be set to specific level requirements so that your hero can progress from zone to zone, but each one would be a separate stand-alone adventure.
Some issues come up, of course, such as whether or not you allow items found in one zone be brought into another zone. Do you allow designers to make major changes to the terrain or do they have to conform to the existing shorelines, mountains, etc?
Comments?
[edited by - 5010 on January 5, 2004 1:10:17 PM]

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Very nice idea,but are you thinking of an endless game?I can only see this prospect in that :/ I could name in pseudo-online rpg,because even though you take updates and rankings on the net you aren''t really in the net,seems strange,but seems a way of evolving the way of rpg gaming somehow. Correct me if I''m wrong,that''s what I saw in this

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quote:Original post by Mushu Usually with (decent) games you get these to spring up anyway, but making them the *only* way to access maps would make it different.

Yes, plus the integration of player feedback allows map builders a chance for fame, promotes competition which should benefits the players with better designed adventures.

But maps could only compete on the same character level, so builders would probably choose the weakest level and compete against it, keeping the game from having boring/uninteresting levels as you play your hero from start to finish.

Also, having fresh content arrive at various levels allows the game to be replayed over and over and enjoying new experiences.

quote:Original post by 2501 Very nice idea,but are you thinking of an endless game?I can only see this prospect in that

Option A: Builders could always design higher and have less competition. But would this result in endless crappy maps? Also would players be less likely to try new adventures at lower levels when new levels continue to arrive?

Option B: More chance of evolution within the given level range, more replaying, more competition, but too much competition would intimidate builders. Even the best builders would feel intimidated when they know that to beat the best design would required a bunch of man-hours.

Option C seems best to me. Lock in an online range for some time, promoting competition like option B, then once in a while open up a new range of levels and watch them scramble to build and compete, giving players to ability to take their hero off ice and continue development.

quote:Original post by 2501 I could name in pseudo-online rpg,because even though you take updates and rankings on the net you aren''t really in the net,seems strange,but seems a way of evolving the way of rpg gaming somehow.

Yes, it requires an online connection but the bandwidth is limited to login, search, download, and update. To cut down on waiting, you could have the player select a series of maps and let the game download them as a background task while you are playing the 1st map. For builders, maps could be updated to the online account while you are playtesting them.

So I guess we could categorize this as- Pseudo-online- Player vs Environment- Builder vs Builder

Another thing to consider: Giving builders some "credits" each month to spend on content created by other builders. This would give the builders some kind of internal economic system. I haven''t thought of this till now.